


Ka

by Canaan



Series: Ka!verse [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:23:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She opened the dented lid and Jack's face stared back at her out of a very old photo.  'Is that him?' Lois asked.  "I thought it looked like him, but it's so old . . . '"  Post-CoE reaction fic, spoilers all the way through Day 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ka

**Author's Note:**

> Angsty, but ends on a up-note. This isn't about fixing anything, yet, especially Jack. This one is just a reaction fic that leaves the door open for the follow-up. Which *will* be h/c. Beta'd by Aibhinn.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them, but Jack keeps me awake at night . . .

  
**Ib**   


Alice knew Jack was dangerous. Mum had said so, had explained it when she was old enough to understand. But he was still her father. After mum had taken her away, he hadn't been there for her, and she'd wanted him around Stephen as little as possible for exactly the same reasons. But he was still her dad: the man who'd checked her wardrobe for monsters when she was very small, who'd held her in his arms and made her feel safe. The voice that had promised everything would be all right.

She hadn't trusted him as far as she could throw him, but when the world was ending out there, she knew he was the only one who could fix it.

She saw how it hurt that he couldn’t pick Stephen up. That flinch, with his hands cuffed behind his back, was the same one she got whenever his parental failings came up.

If she weren't Jack Harkness's daughter, Stephen would still be alive.

It was the hostage situation that put them in range. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been Stephen. She'd been so relieved, even with the world going to hell outside . . . that Stephen was here, safe. And that was what had killed him. If he'd been out there, taking the same chance as all the others, it would have been someone else. _Anyone_ else. Someone else's son. Someone else's world.

She looked down at Jack, and he looked back at her with an ancient, undying pain in his eyes. And she hated him, because it was easier than hating herself.

If she weren't Jack Harkness's daughter . . . if she weren't Stephen's mother, he'd be alive right now.

Alice Carter turned away, wishing she'd never been born.

 

  
**Akh**   


He'd tried to kill himself more than once. For a while, there, it had seemed like, if he could just do it thoroughly enough, it might stick.

That was a hundred-odd years ago.

Jack sat on a bench, alone, thinking about concrete. As ways to die went, smothering a couple of times and then being crushed several more was not at the top of his list. But the darkness was very complete and very lasting.

Jack Harkness was a special kind of failure. Alice had trusted him to fix everything, and he couldn't. Instead, he'd brought the kind of darkness to her life that nothing ever fixes. Ianto had trusted him to have grown, to have learned from his mistakes and to just . . . refuse to do the horrible thing. Ianto expected him to be the Doctor, and instead, he'd seen one more young lover to his grave.

He sighed. Concrete wasn't a permanent solution. If no one broke him out before then, eventually, the elements would wear it away, and the pain would be just as fresh, the air as thick, and the world as dim as in this moment.

Alice stepped into the hall. He wished she'd hit him. He wished she'd rage or wail or _anything_ but just look at him with hate in her eyes. Instead, she turned and walked away, and he knew it would be the last time. A haze of thick, grey gloom spread between him and the world. He'd like to say it was tears, but this . . . would be with him long after he'd forgotten how to cry.

He'd had to watch as Stephen died. It was the last penance he could do, because there was no penance big enough for this. Nothing except his own death, and that, he couldn't give, no matter how much he wanted to.

 

  
**Ka**   


It was strange to be building a nursery and a Torchwood facility at the same time. Some days, Gwen found herself sorting through paint samples in between supervising Lois on the firing range. Some days, she found herself looking at the nursery window and wondering how to child-safe a ladder, in case Rhys ever needed to make a run for it with the little one in his arms.

"I found this today," Lois said, handing her a battered metal box. "When I looked inside, I wasn't sure it was really Archives. No signs of how it was filed."

Gwen accepted the box. "Thanks, Lois. It doesn't look familiar, but Torchwood's held so many secrets . . . " She opened the dented lid and Jack's face stared back at her out of a very old photo. He was seated beside a woman in a wedding dress. Someone he'd never mentioned. Gwen swallowed. "Oh, Jack," she breathed.

"Is that him?" Lois asked. "I thought it looked like him, but it's so old . . . "

Between the chaos in the country and Jack's leaving Torchwood in Gwen's hands, Lois had never met Jack face to face. Gwen forced down a laugh that could have been far too close to a sob, had it escaped. "That's him," she said. "He's . . . older than he looks. He can't die, Lois." She swallowed against a tightness in her throat. "If he could have, I think he would have."

Gwen flipped through the contents of the box, studying faces she'd never known. Jack's friends? Lovers? An old library card. A piece of ribbon. It was . . . almost invasive, the two of them looking at Jack's memories this way. She closed the lid. "I'll save them for him. I'm sure he'll want them back."

Lois hesitated. "You think . . . he'll be back, then?" Her eyes drifted away, uncomfortable. She didn't know just how far Jack had gone traveling, but Gwen had told her what he'd done, and why he'd left.

Gwen set the box on table that was serving her as a desk. "I know he will," she said, calmly. "He's a good man, Lois, despite what happened, and he's got forever. Someday, he'll want to know what happened to us. How we lived. Maybe how we died." She rubbed the swell of her belly and wondered if she should ask Lois to file the box in some clever way, so if Jack took fifty or a hundred years, his return to Torchwood would still trigger the box's return to him. Then she smiled. Not today, she thought--there was plenty of time for that. "But today, we're alive. The world hasn't come apart at the seams, nobody's shooting at us, and I'm less worried about what might come out of the Rift tonight than what Rhys's mum's gifting her grandchild with this week." That drew a smile from the too-sober young woman, and Gwen nodded, pleased. "Where there's life, there's hope."

Lois, who'd already seen the inside of a prison cell in Torchwood's service, smiled back. "Yes," she said.


End file.
